Keres P., Nunn J. Paul Keres: The Road to the Top

Batsford, 1996. — 260 p. — ISBN: 0-7134-8062-9.What prevented Paul Keres from becoming World Chess Champion? Readers can judge for themselves from the games in this book, which chart his career as he refined his classical attacking style. John Nunn has selected and annotated the finest of Keres's games from 1962 to his death in 1975.This book contains Paul Keres' best games played in the period 1929-1950. And as one might imagine, almost all the games are against World class players. What sets this book apart from many others of its genre is the annotations. Another reviewer rightly mentioned that Keres' style of annotation is as good as Bronstein. Those who are familiar with David Bronstein's books will get the point. The book has around 250 pages and covers 50 of Keres' games. This might give you some idea as to how detailed the annotations would be(unlike the lightly annotated books that cover a players' 100 or more games in the same number of pages).The games are all Keres' wins but at no point one feels even the slightest hint of personal bias in his annotations. They are highly objective and very detailed. Keres clearly explains the plans of both the sides and devotes around 5-6 pages to almost every game. He gives detailed variations where necessary but nothing to overwhelm an average player.